IL PAESE DEL TRAMONTO

This is a band of four young musicians from Parma, Italy, and this is their second album. As I don't speak, read or write in the Italian language, my review is only about the music of this album.

I don`t know if this album is a conceptual album or not, but in general the music and the arrangements are very good. It contains a lot of ingredients from the Prog Rock music style: different time signatures in the songs, the use of silences and variations in the intensities of the music, long song structures, the use of 'old' keyboard sounds (organ, analog synthesisers, mellotron, piano), some Classical Music influences in some of the piano arrangements, etc. The music in this album remembers me of influences from several other Prog and Neo-Prog Rock bands like Emerson Lake and Palmer, Triumvirat, IQ, Marillion (with Fish)'. but without really losing their Italian identity. All the young musicians of this band (they really look in photos of not being of more than thirty years old, but I could be wrong) sound like being musically trained in musical schools or even with private musical classes (but I also could be wrong on this, too). They are very good musicians and they seem to have a lot of musical ideas which as a whole sound arranged and performed well.

The music is melodic for the most part. It really is not very 'dark' like some of the titles from the songs (or my little understanding of the Italian language) could suggest.

The use of the organ sounds (I don`t know if it is a real Hammond organ or not) make the musical influences from ELP, Triumvirat and Rick Wakeman very clear, at least for me. The same could be said about the use of analog synthesizers and of the mellotron (done with the real old instruments or being sampled from them or created with new digital keyboards). The keyboards create musical atmospheres on which the occasional guitar solos are good. The lead vocals are good, even if they are not really outstanding. Also there are some occasional backing vocals.

As a whole, this is a good album which is a good representative of the Prog Rock musical style. Even if the music is not totally Italian in a strict sense, the mixture with the influences from the Prog Rock from other countries (particularly from England) makes this album interesting. Maybe their main idea as a band was to 'rescue' the influences from mainly the 'old' Prog Rock bands from the seventies using those 'old' analog sounds with lyrics written and sung in the Italian language. As a whole, all these things work very well.

I also like the recording and the mixing of this album. The cover design is also good. The album sounds like being made with a lot of work and dedication. So, I give a four stars rating to it.

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